Pull Down Heaven
by pyrrhy
Summary: Not all monsters wear Alucard's face. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

**Pull Down Heaven, Part I**

Set during Integra's late teens, pre-canonish. A story of layers, wherein Integra comes to realize that not all monsters wear Alucard's face. The title comes from a line in John Webster's _Duchess of Malfi_, which I thought appropriate due to the denseness and ambiguity of its meaning. Otherwise known as the fic that very nearly ate me alive.

There were some problems with the story upload manager, but most of the formatting errors should be corrected now. With thanks to morph and TheHellsingSecret for bringing this to my attention!

Disclaimer: _Hellsing_ belongs to Hirano Kouta. I just play in his sandbox.

* * *

_Gaze no more into the bitter glass  
The demons, with their subtle guile  
Lift up before us when they pass  
Or only gaze a little while_  
William Butler Yeats, "The Two Trees"

**Prelude: Devil on My Back**

Wind howled across the barren plain, battering the stagecoach that ran before it. Sensing an end to their long journey, they had been travelling throughout the night in an effort to hasten their progress. The road towards London was, at this hour, deserted and silent. In the distance, the treeline was a dark, undifferentiated mass that crouched beneath the steel-grey dome of the sky. The sun would rise soon.

Abraham Van Helsing watched as the sleepy driver flicked his reins, the motion a mechanical one after so many hours of travel. His actions gave rise to a barely perceptible burst of speed which, moments later, reverted to their original pace, a half-hearted trot that caused gravel to crunch loudly underfoot and loose pebbles to rattle against the belly of their vehicle. The horses, tired as they were, had barely twitched their ears in response.

The Harker boy had suggested that they take the train from Dover to London, but Abraham had been unwilling to subject their unorthodox travelling articles to too many prying eyes. He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder, where a heavy, oblong case had been strapped to the roof of the coach behind him.

The driver spoke. "We have to put in at the next inn, three, four miles ahead. Horses can't go much further without rest." _And neither can I,_ remained unsaid, although the words were implicit within the man's statement. His voice was hoarse, barely carrying over the creaky rattle of the coach.

Though reluctant, Abraham was forced to agree with him. The long journey had been hard on all of them. Seward and Harker had taken turns sitting up with the driver; even Mina had volunteered to do her share, but they had all agreed that the sweet girl was fatigued and needed her rest. It was now Abraham's watch and he was feeling more than a little worse for the wear at this point. His face felt like stiff leather, weathered and beaten by the wind into a hard mask. His eyes ached abominably. "You are right," he conceded. "Think you we can be on our way again, with the rest of one or two nights?"

"One would suffice, if you were really pushing it," the driver said dubiously. "I'm not sure I understand why the bleeding hurry. Beg pardon, squire," he added, apologizing for his familiar manner.

"We have been long touring the Continent," Abraham temporized, "and are eager to see home again." Which was, he decided, practically the truth.

"Aye, them foreign lands are good for a jaunt, but there's none that can match the glory of London." He hacked and spat over the side of the coach, unaware of the doctor's frown. "You had a good trip I expect."

Abraham said dryly, "It went the way we had planned." _Eventually._

"What's in the black crate back there? If you don't mind me asking."

"Perishables," Abraham answered flatly after a moment of silence, his tone of voice cutting off any further line of enquiry. Taking his cue from Abraham's abruptly chilly manner, the cab driver returned his attention to the road and shook the reins again.

His response hadn't been by any means a lie. Although currently subdued, the nosferatu could hardly be considered dead—not quite. Abraham smiled grimly. Monsters, after all, were difficult to destroy. And sometimes you needed one of their kind to hunt down those of similar ilk.

A serpentine voice seemed to twine itself about his mind. _Oh, yes,_ it whispered to him, just barely on the edges of perception. _Have a care, though, where you place your feet. The duplicitous often find themselves fighting on the wrong side of a war—as I myself have learned, to my eternal regret._

Abraham shuddered, fighting off the sensation that something had just walked over his grave.

He tugged on the lapels of his red coat, drawing them closer around him, as he looked ahead, through the straining light, where only further stretches of empty road awaited. Abraham had a proposal for the British Queen, and time was of the essence; for already, on the distant horizon, dawn loomed.

**A Succession of Masks**

It was almost dawn.

Integra awoke as the room began to fill with a murky, indeterminate light. The sky beyond, encased within the tall arches of her bedroom windows, was a shade of blue slate tapering off into grey. Shutting her eyes, Integra turned over in bed and felt, more than heard, the rustle of sheets against her body, starched, clean-white and still smelling of yesterday's sun. Her toes dug into the warm linen of her bedclothes as she stretched, then drowsed intermittently, falling further and further from sleep.

She had been dreaming.

Integra frequently dreamed: of speaking to her father, or of a woman in a long skirt, who smelled of summer and milk (with soft palms; warm, dusky arms; a voice that Integra could never quite remember.) Waking from these dreams left Integra with a formless ache in her throat that threatened to spill over, to become material, a thing acknowledged. She had dreams of vampires and men and the Round Table courting Hellsing or storming its walls; and yet more dreams of dishonour and sometimes pain; of blood; of power. She dreamt of fear, of the tedious little tasks that took up most of her waking hours, and of sex, occasionally pleasant, other times not.

Sometimes she would dream of Richard, memories and old fear-conjured scenarios hounding her subconscious with a bothersome regularity. Often he chased her through passages drowned in dust and stale air and the sharp, hot smell of the inside of a man's head. Sometimes her uncle died; sometimes she would be in the wrong room; sometimes it was Richard's blood that Alucard drank before turning on her with fingers bowed like knives.

Her most recent dream lingered still. It haunted the boundaries of her awakening thoughts, its amorphous substance retained within the sensations of her bed and the warmth of her quilt. Blinding sun. Grass. The dream came to her in flashes, not images so much as they were impressions—slippery, vivid, too close for understanding—and already receding, wraith-like, from her conscious grasp.

Integra strained after the memory, trying to actively will herself back into slumber. The harder she tried, however, the more the dream eluded her. Her mind was already waking, falling into the routine of cataloguing what seemed to be an endless list of tasks awaiting her attention: wash, dress, have breakfast, respond to the late missive she'd received the night before, consult the ward on their reserves of blood....

And there was something else, which materialized first as a feeling of familiar uneasiness, dogging her, insisting that she awake, quickly, now. Then Integra carefully brushed a finger against her inner thigh, acknowledging, with her usual resignation, the slick dampness that she found there. She had been hoping that she was mistaken.

Exhaling noisily, Integra tossed the quilt aside, too agitated to pretend any longer that she was still asleep. Cold air dashed against her skin, raising goose-pimples. Integra fumbled across the sidetable for her spectacles and slipped them on. The light was brighter now, clear and pale, as the world fell into focus before her lenses. The floor boards were cool and smooth beneath her bare feet, barely warmed by the heat from the radiator, an archaic, unwieldy device that pinged and gurgled as it piped hot water through its ducts. Her reflection, clad in white pyjamas, flitted over the glass windowpanes as she made her way across the room.

She pushed open the bathroom door, bracing herself against the wave of almost frosty air that drove the last vestiges of sleep from her. Grand though the Hellsing manor was, and armed to the teeth with the latest in bleeding edge weaponry and security systems, Integra always found it partway amusing that the bathrooms had never been introduced to the twenty-first century along with the rest of the building. A new plumbing system had been installed somewhere along the line—Integra dimly recalled a month's worth of loud construction noises reverberating through the mansion, and strange men in overalls walking around, shepherded by her father's personal guard—but for most part, the bathrooms retained their stolid, old world austerity, complete with frost-bite inducing temperatures that persisted almost all the year round.

What she wouldn't give, Integra considered idly as she flicked on the bathroom lights, for something really frivolous and indulgent, like self-heating toilet seats.

_Well,_ she conceded wryly, _quite a lot, actually._ There were always more important channels into which Hellsing's funds could be funnelled, even if they were nothing more than upkeep costs for the old and sprawling estate. There was a radiator in the bathroom as well, which Integra did not trouble herself with, knowing that she would be finished and gone even before the creaky device could begin to warm up.

The unpleasant sensation of dampness between her thighs had forewarned her, and so it was with very little surprise that she verified the source of the brown stain in her pants.

Integra did not like menstruating. She did not like how the possibility of her monthly bleeding crept up upon her, unpredictable, abrupt, keeping her anxious until it arrived and discomfited until it went away again. It served as an unpleasant reminder, not necessarily of her femaleness, but of her humaness, this body that sweated and bled and hungered, just as all other bodies did.

Being human, merely Integra, was not a luxury the heir of Hellsing could afford.

She tended to her necessities and washed her hands, then her face, at the porcelain sink. As Integra towelled herself dry, her gaze was caught by the blue eyes staring back at her from the mirror. She leaned forward, closing the distance until the myopic blurriness of her image firmed into a sharp outline, her nose just inches from the glass. A sensation of dislocation came over Integra as she studied her reflection, removed suddenly from the experience of her own skin.

With her father's vividly blue eyes and light-coloured hair (going dry towards the ends, which only vanity prevented her from doing away with), Integra's colouring was rather typically Nordic, and only the darker shade of her skin spoiled the effect. The woman in the mirror looked, Integra thought, a little severe. She tilted her head, trying to find a more flattering angle. There was something plain in the sharpness of her features, stark and angular, almost too thin for her tall frame. Her shoulders were wide despite her slimness. Integra wondered if she looked masculine, then if cutting her hair short would complete the effect, and had to fight the urge to smile, not for the sake of smiling, but to see if she might look more attractive doing it.

_Foolishness._ The word coiled into her mind. Integra blinked, wondering if she had imagined the voice. The bathroom lights flickered. Then the mirror flashed red, staining her reflection.

Integra jerked away, reaching hastily for her spectacles. The welcome sensation of anger rolled over her, displacing her embarrassment at having been discovered mooning over her own image. Blue eyes layered by a sickly red sheen stared back at her as Integra glowered into the mirror, knowing that Alucard could see, that he was watching—had been watching.

"I'll thank you to keep your interfering self out of my living quarters," she said aloud. "To say nothing of my head."

_Victorian water closets, half-clad virgins… you weren't expecting me to resist, were you, Master?_ A mental snigger, as he watched Integra struggle to formulate a response to his impertinence. Then, _You've grown,_ he remarked suddenly.

"I turned eighteen last week," she said pointedly, as though commonplace terms like 'propriety' or even 'privacy' were things that might occur to the centuries-old vampire who had, for the past four years, shared her mind like a particularly unwelcome guest—the kind that wandered around the house making rude comments about the wallpaper and rummaged in your drawers without your permission. Alucard certainly gave no sign of having noticed her hint, or—and this was the likelier option—had decided to ignore it. Finally, she gave the presence in her mind a push, "Now, be off with you," and tried not to reveal her sense of relief when she felt it begin to recede.

Alucard sent something else along the tenuous mind-link that he shared with her before disappearing entirely from her awareness, something off-colour, intended to provoke, about blood and monthly feedings. Despite her asperity, Integra felt herself flush at the insinuation, her cheeks suddenly tingling with annoyance.

She brushed her teeth with her back to the mirror.

Once she was done washing, Integra returned to her room and laid out her attire for the day. Walter had diligently attended to the full spectrum of her family's needs through the years. His duties ranged from maintaining an overview of the mansion's employees, as well as Hellsing's private army, all the way down to the little things, such as ensuring that the master's personal effects remained in stock, scheduling appointments for the family tailors and shoemakers to come around, and attending to the master's attire in the morning. In that last area, however, Integra differed from her father, preferring to dress herself.

Her movements were quick, efficient, permitting no excess. In the pallid half-light filtering into the room, Integra watched as the layers came off, and then as the layers went on: first her brassiere, shielding her breasts, then the dark trousers pulled up over her flat crotch. Soft, white cotton brushed the puckered ridge of flesh crossing her right bicep as Integra buttoned her shirt, and the dark red silk of her necktie hid the curve of her throat. In short order, Integra had donned her socks and then her boots, her shoulder holster, pistol and finally her suit jacket, masculine in style but tailored to fit the planes of her body, as smooth and controlled as the lines on a statue.

Crossing to the tall mirror before her dresser, Integra brushed out her hair. Her glasses flashed in the mirror, momentarily blinding her, reflecting the morning glare as the sun broke through the overcast sky outside. She tugged the shoulders of her blazer straight and adjusted the small, silver cross that adorned her tie. The crucifix was a talisman, serving purposes more mythical than practical (as Alucard liked to remind her, a small cross of metal wasn't going to stop any bullet, not even one fired by a vampire.) But even a modern knight required her suit of armour, and the cross was all part of the image that Integra had meticulously sculpted for herself, in her efforts to render Hellsing, to become Hellsing: unassailable; impervious; immaculate.

Integra's bowels ached, suffused with the heavy, hollow feeling that typically attended the first day of her menstruation; her reflection, however, was impeccable, and she smiled at it in satisfaction.

Integra Hellsing left her room and descended the stairs to the mansion's administrative levels. Behind her, the door swung shut.

**Interlude: Of Angels**

Behind him, footsteps crunched over the broken glass littering the room. Blood drenched the floor; the wall; his very senses.

A high, sweet voice said, "Wasn't that a little excessive?"

Walter spun around, snarling. "You've some bloody cheek telling me that! After you ran away and left me to do the mopping up!"

Alucard laughed. He looked like a child again—a particularly attractive child, with black bangs cut straight above his red eyes, currently narrowed with mirth, his sharp canines flashing white against the dewy pink cavern of his mouth. He picked his way across the room, almost fastidious in his movements. Walter imagined that Alucard was avoiding the glass, until he realized that every step the vampire took left the floor beneath him dry, sucked clean of blood. He had to be absorbing it through the soles of his feet.

Walter watched in morbid fascination as Alucard skipped past the decimated husks of dead soldiers to stand before him, his cheeks glowing. The acrid copper odour was gone, and Alucard had the manner of a well-fed cat.

"I mopped up too," the white-clad leech told him, pretty head with its ridiculous hat tilted at an angle that Walter might have described as coquettish, had not all his sensibilities, such as they were, rebelled at the image. He turned away hastily, knowing that Alucard continued to stare at him with eyes too red, too manic and too old for the persona that he currently wore.

Walter moved carefully up to the window. It was silent and dark outside. He had dispatched the last unit of German troops within the area, although it never hurt to be careful. Alucard appeared, pressing up against his side, head swivelling about to inspect their surroundings in a pantomime of his cautious manner.

Walter barely restrained his flinch. "Why do you keep that form?" he snapped. "It makes you look like a girl."

Alucard just looked at him. "Why do you keep that name? Angel of Death. It makes you sound like a hypocrite."

The boy felt his cheeks warm. "I didn't choose it for myself," he said defensively.

"You like it, though." Angelic lips curved suddenly in a disarming pout. "So I choose something to mirror you. Something cherubic for the avenging seraph." He pushed away from Walter and twirled around. "Don't you approve?"

Walter wasn't sure that he didn't.

Alucard smiled.

**Acts in Uncovering**

Integra frowned.

Somebody had left a large stack of old books on her desk. It was an unusual sight as far as Integra was concerned. Most of the work that she dealt with was electronic in nature, excepting the bills, authorization slips and formal documents that required her signature.

A brief glance through the intimidating stack confirmed Integra's initial suspicions: they were financial reports, compiled and bound together into thick volumes. The documents were old, their pages dusty and mildew-stained, dating all the way back to the early ninteen-hundreds—her father's time, she thought, not hers.

Integra wondered with a twinge of annoyance if the help had, upon dusting the room, forgotten to replace the books from wherever they'd been taken. Further examination revealed coded stickers on the books' spines, indicating that they had arrived from the Hellsing mansion's library.

She tapped an impatient finger against a yellowing cover, lips pursed. _So._ The records probably contained information that Walter wished to discuss. The butler routinely sorted her mail, forwarding the tasks that required her personal attention. Integra only wished that he had been a little more succinct in his address.

Integra decided to hold off inspecting the records until she had completed the majority of her daily tasks, mostly tedious, which ranged from fielding queries from the military and the government, to wading through the various reports that an organization as large as Hellsing inevitably generated.

Then she picked up the first book, flipping cursorily through columns of neatly typed figures until it fell open at the centre. A notebook, its cover worn and faded, had been bound into the spine of the ledger. Integra thumbed idly through the pages before she chose one to read from at random, squinting at the cramped lines of handwriting that she found inside.

_'... lucid and responsive. Restrictions are holding. Stimulation of pain centres no longer provoke any reaction: possibly nerves were damaged in the process and are no longer functional since the fifth round of testing, or subject has developed a high degree of tolerance that inures him to pain (consult notes from year 1898; tag: RET-782E). Dismemberment requires approx. 60 secs for regeneration. We estimate that nigh-instantaneous effects can be expected within the next 2 months, given no gap between tests in order to refine and calibrate results. Have recommended to Sir Hellsing that we do so—given the subject's invulnerable state, no recuperation period is necessary...'_

Integra skimmed over the scrawled words again before turning to the next page, which contained more of the same, rambling notes describing the restrictions, the experiments and the subject upon whom they had been inflicted. The contrast between the clinical language of the writer and the scientific tortures so carefully detailed within were difficult to reconcile.

Integra wondered that she felt nothing beyond a mild sense of disbelief.

She spent the remainder of the afternoon sorting through the rest of the bound volumes, six in all. Her search turned up more old journals, belonging to other writers, in addition to reams of official laboratory reports, all carefully secreted away in between the pages of old ledgers and financial statements. It was as though somebody had deliberately tried to lose it all—the journals, the reports, the theories and the results—but was, at the same time, constrained by an understanding of the information's worth, too damning to keep, yet too significant to entirely destroy.

The records and the accounts appeared genuine, as far as Integra was able to determine, possessing a level of detail too elaborate to be a simple hoax. The sheer volume of data and findings generated by the research project made her head whirl. It was more information than she could have believed existed, from detailed analyses of a mechanism termed 'seals' and the esoteric rituals used to bind the anonymous 'subject' (as though its identity required any stretch of the imagination to discern), to coolly detached reports regarding development work being conducted on the abilities of the subject in question.

Integra's attention returned time and again to the first journal entry that she had chanced across, dwelling upon the uneasy contrast of its content against its tone: feeling subject; unfeeling discourse. There were many similar to the initial entry, but this one in particular drew her regard, filling her with a sensation of restlessness and disquiet that she was unable to shake off.

Integra could already feel the beginnings of a migraine pounding at her temples. To take the edge off her tension, she drew a slim pewter case from her pocket, took out a cigar and lit it.

The critique of Hellsing never ended, for all that Integra could almost _smell_ the relief whenever she showed up to take a vampire case off the hands of civil defense. Already marginalized through Hellsing's supernatural field of expertise, Integra had grown used to fending off any number of attacks, ranging from subtle denunciations of Hellsing's out-dated methods and redundant status, to not-so-subtle accusations regarding her sex—as though being a woman was something that Integra could help, or which somehow diminished her competency.

Integra had never found it necessary to apologize for either.

Unable to bear the strain of sitting still, she rose to her feet and walked to the window, trailing smoke behind her.

The sounds of her private army going through their morning drills filtered in from across the distance. She could see the straight rows of men, garbed conspicuously in navy blue, marching across the open fields. The Hellsing grounds were really more of a military compound than a manor in this respect, the latter being an elaborate and elegant façade, cultivated to mislead. It was, Integra reflected wryly, an apt metaphor for so much of what went on inside the building. Her latest discovery included.

The Hellsing director puffed distractedly at her cigar as she frowned at nothing, slitting her eyes against the brightness of the day outside. She drew the rich odour of the tobacco into her mouth, enjoying the slide of smoke across her palate, the slightly abrasive flavour that tickled the back of her throat, rolling warmly over her tongue.

Walter, Integra knew, detested her smoking habit, considering it an activity best reserved for men and aging society madams, both of which Integra patently was not. The butler had done his level best to deter her until he realized that his disapproval wasn't going to make one whit of a difference. Alucard had been little better, at one point teasing her incessantly about the possibilities of an infantile oral fixation. Where the No-life King had managed to pick up twentieth-century Freudian psychobabble, Integra had no idea.

Oh, there were health risks, of which Integra was well-aware. Throat cancer, lung cancer. She hasn't paused to consider these possibilities when she had first started. That had been an entirely different project altogether, born out of some half-acknowledged impulse to draw closer to her father, as though she could somehow enter into his shoes through the act of smoking his cigars, experience him and make him manifest once more, a living and breathing body and not a corpse in the ground.

That, of course, had been an exercise in futility, and Integra had cried after, having sought comfort but finding disillusionment instead. But she persisted in the habit, and so long as Integra was being frank with herself, health risks or no, she never quite expected to live long enough to have to deal with the consequences, beyond the stale smell to her suit at the end of a long day, or the occasional scattering of ashes across her desk.

For now, however, Integra had other concerns foremost on her mind. Returning to her desk, Integra skimmed through the journals again, wondering if Walter knew about them (who else could have delivered them to her office?) and if he knew why they had been archived the way they had been.

_No,_ she grimly corrected herself; she knew why they had been hidden. The documents lay before her, silent, accusatory, like shame unearthed. What Integra needed to determine was how Walter had discovered the records pertaining to Hellsing's less-than-exemplary forays into vampire research, and for how long Walter had known.

The thick odour of her cigar suddenly seemed overwhelming, intensifying Integra's headache. She stubbed out the cigar before hitting the intercom at her desk.

"Walter?"

A few moments elapsed before she heard him on the other end of the line. "Sir Hellsing. Is there anything you require? Dinner, perhaps?"

Integra glanced at the wall clock, startled. It was past four.

"I need to speak to you, Walter." She looked at the clock again and at the work that awaited her, then acquiesced. "And why don't you bring something up with you as well. Something light, please, it's almost teatime, anyway."

"Of course, my lady." Walter's response was pitch-perfect, conveying entire worlds of properly concealed resignation and disapproval within his deferential manner.

Integra couldn't help but smile as she released the button.

Walter arrived carrying a tray laden with sandwiches, tea, and a small jug of milk.

He bowed before setting the tray down on Integra's desk, correct as always in his address. Integra remembered him from her childhood as a steadying and infinitely reliable presence. He would gift her with books and help her with homework that wasn't related to vampires. But then Integra had grown older, and while Walter was never aloof, he was always proper, reserved, respectful. Taking her cue from him, Integra had gradually learned to define the boundaries of their relationship.

She retained, however, an image of that younger Walter: his face not so lined with age, loyal aide to her father and conspirator to her whenever something went amiss, like when she lost her shoes because she had gone playing by the lake, or when she toppled and broke that ugly old plaster statue, full of cracks, that used to grace the hallway outside her bedroom.

But that had been then, and this was now. Walter was always careful to delineate their respective positions, especially since her father passed away—he as butler, and she as the master of Hellsing. Integra was no longer a little girl grasping for an approximation of paternal affection in lieu of being denied the actual thing, or a young woman seeking comfort and authority from an experienced but nevertheless subordinate employee. And so she had learned, and grown up.

Integra picked up a ledger and handed it to him. His mask-like demeanour did not so much as flicker as he registered the object, confirming her suspicions. She felt her heart sink.

"I assume you were aware of these?"

Walter set the heavy volume back on the desk, his manner just a little too deliberate, his composure that little bit too fixed.

"I was," he admitted. "The late sir Hellsing, your father, ordered that I archive them in this fashion. I was to safeguard these accounts until you were old enough to read them."

Integra felt her temper flare and quelled it with an effort. "Hide them, you mean. Look at all this information. I thought we'd lost all records of Hellsing's past research, and it turns out that we've just been sitting on them all along. And here," she found the first journal and spun it across the table to him, "it never explicitly references the subject, but you know who they're talking about. All of this, it's about Alucard, isn't it? And there I was, thinking that turning into bats or regenerating from nothing was a trick that all elder vampires possessed!"

"I have to admit, I wondered at times if your eighteenth year was a little too long to wait. Your father was quite insistent, however."

Integra leaned back in her seat and motioned to the armchair in front of her desk. "Is there anything else you'd like to disclose, while we're here?"

Finally, Walter shifted, losing his stiff-backed impassivity. He moved to seat himself before her, his hands still properly clasped before him, but the lines of his faced softer now, creased into a troubled expression. "I can understand your displeasure. Flying blind has never been my preference. But... you have inspected the data available? I haven't seen all of it, but one can imagine its contents. Surely you can see the reason for your father's reticence."

"It's a wonder his reticence—and yours, I might add—hasn't already cost me the directorship," she remarked dryly. "Imagine if all of this information found its way to the Round Table, for instance." _If they discover just how little data Hellsing has been running on these four years…._ Integra repressed a shudder. It didn't bear thinking about. She could already see those sententious old men holding up this particular discovery as an example rather than the exception, crowing over the fact that Hellsing wasn't as in control of its pet vampire as the institution had imagined.

"They would go absolutely spare," Walter agreed gravely, with just a hint of what could have been a smile about his mouth.

Integra felt her lips twitch. "Not a pleasant experience by any measure. Which I, primarily, would have to endure, mind you."

"The role of head of Hellsing has never been an easy position to fill." Walter leaned forward now, his gaze intent. "But Lord Hellsing had his own concerns as well, especially as regarded you and his duties as a father. And you have never let us down, my lady. Not once."

The late afternoon warmth streamed in through the immense windows behind her desk. Walter seemed suddenly old and, somehow, fragile beneath the white glow, belying the strength and killing speed that still resided within his long frame. His skin looked brittle; she could see the faint wrinkles that crossed his face like the network of veins in a leaf. The light etched shadows beneath his eyes and in the corners of his mouth. Only the harsh crag of his nose defied age still, jutting sharply away from the loose lines of his face.

Integra was suddenly touched by the pang that one experiences for someone not yet dead, grieved by the anticipation of his loss, the ineluctable fact of his ending.

"Why don't you," she sighed, "start from the beginning."

Walter nodded, reaching forward to prepare her tea as he spoke. "By all accounts, your grandfather commenced the research project in England, an extension of his studies back in the Netherlands. He personally trained a team of demonologists and researchers to study and so better understand the undead being who had contracted himself to Hellsing. He also began the rudimentary process of binding Alucard to the Hellsing line with the use of alchemical seals—a true binding, you understand, of being to blood, something quite beyond the pact originally forged between Van Helsing and his vampire. It wasn't a perfect implementation by any stretch, as you can tell by Alucard's current manner, but it did make him a good deal more… tractable. Your father continued the tradition, and was able to make modifications to Alucard's abilities, improving his battle state."

Integra had, on past occasions, caught herself thinking of Alucard as Hellsing's weapon of choice, if only in terms more figurative than literal. To hear Walter speaking of it so plainly, of her own father, who had extended to notion to actively shape and modify the vampire just as somebody would a gun or any other inanimate object, unsettled Integra with how uncannily her thoughts had paralleled his.

They strayed too closely to the division between human and monster in a world where Integra had to see in black and white, never shades, couldn't afford to see in any other way. Empathy was a dangerous emotion that drew her close, too close. When humans descended to the level of monsters, and monsters became victims, where was certitude? Integra did not have the luxury of doubt, of swaying, of questioning, falling, but she could feel the world spinning away from beneath her feet, leaving her with no stable ground.

"My lady. Sir Hellsing." The clink as Walter set the teacup before her recalled Integra to the present. She reached for it reflexively. The look that he gave her was piercing. "Are you all right?"

Integra shook her head. "I'm fine."

She glanced down at the teacup, steadying her hands around the smooth porcelain. She could see her reflection trembling in the uneven surface of the tea, the cross at her necktie gleaming brightly back at her. She pressed her lips together and briefly shut her eyes.

When she opened them again, Walter was still looking at her, concern and wariness mingled in his gaze.

"You've known Alucard a long time now, haven't you?"

"A good fifty years at least, now."

"Were you there during the time of this research project? When my father…" She stopped, frowning. She couldn't make herself say the words.

"I believe I'd entered your father's service by the time, although it was a while longer before I was allowed to know what was going on. I was just a young lad, maybe this tall," Walter gestured vaguely about his waist, darting her a look simultaneously rueful and amused, and Integra couldn't help but smile, trying to imagine what this tall, dignified old man might have looked like as a boy. Walter was silent for a moment, gazing off into a past only he could see. "The research might have gone on, but then there was the war with Germany. Britannia needed every body she could get."

Integra supposed she was lucky the experiments had been terminated, whatever the reason. How was she supposed reconcile moral transgression against practical need? Perhaps the clinical tone employed in the numerous reports was the only method that their authors had of sustaining their gruesome research. Or maybe they used it because that was precisely how the researchers, probably dead now, perceived the nature of their experiments, their vampire subject being the monster, lower than a beast, and humans… not. Integra couldn't tell, and she wasn't sure which was worse—to commit a deed in spite of being aware of the ethical implications at hand, or to remain utterly blind to the contradictions inherent in their own actions.

Integra felt her gut clench in discomfort, but it was a personal pain, relevant only to herself and separate from the uneasy churning of her thoughts. She had often wondered what it was that distinguished Alucard from the lesser vampires he hunted; but, as the years went by, she began to take his power for granted and had dismissed the question, attributing it all to his age.

"What do I do?"

"Sir?"

"This. All of it. The research. Alucard. Hellsing. What do I do, Walter?" The question emerged from her, quietly anguished. "Undead are an abomination of God's design, but what is this, this hubris, this cruelty? Who are the monsters when we would subject a sentient being to... this?" Her gesture took in the stack of hidden records and the years of meticulously inflicted pain that they represented. "We're no better than the vampires we hunt."

"Integra."

"You know," Integra murmured, looking away, "I'd always believed that it would be cleaner, somehow."

Walter faced her gravely. "We only do what we can, with what we have. The research was necessary, if not completely justified. Hellsing needed further information on the enemy, which only a compliant specimen could supply."

"I can hardly imagine Alucard being compliant in respect of anything, let alone bodily torture," said Integra wryly.

"Oh, he wasn't happy with what Hellsing did to him. Who could be?" Walter looked at her, his eyes piercing. "But never make the mistake of pitying him, my lady. Alucard… Alucard did not come to serve your grandfather for altruistic reasons. Hellsing may have bound him, but we also gave him power—rather too much of it, I'm afraid. We needed his power then—and we need it still. As for Alucard, he revels in his strength, and he enjoys the means through which you allow him to unleash it. Hellsing may have hurt him in order to make him this powerful, but know this: Alucard's present abilities, however he came by them, are not something that he would willingly forfeit."

Integra felt her fingers twitch, wishing suddenly for the weight of a cigar between them; but that was merely displacement activity, a desire for some kind of action to anchor herself when her equilibrium was less than it should be. She dismissed the impulse and drank her tea instead, thinking, while Walter waited for her response.

Finally: "I'm not going to resume the research." _Absolutely not. Let that particular evil be done with and buried._ She met Walter's gaze as she said it, and couldn't deny the relief that she felt when the old man nodded in response.

"Nevertheless, this is a part of your inheritance. There is information in here that I doubt your father ever revealed to me—or to Alucard, for that matter. Study them. It should go a long way in helping you to understand what Alucard is, what he's capable of. And how to control him."

"Control." Her lip twisted.

"You must, Integra." Walter's voice was low. "Control him, and use his strength. He is a weapon, however else you wish to think of him. A dangerous one. What Alucard's been exercising of late is only a fraction of the abilities that Hellsing has built into him, to say nothing of his native powers, which are suppressed by the binding seals." Walter frowned, glancing down at his gloves. "My lady, might I speak plainly? Alucard might have been human a long time ago, but he now only lightly wears the appearance of a man. Don't be fooled by his complaisance simply because you are the one who holds the leash."

"You fought alongside him in the war. He's defended me—defended us—since Richard's bid for power. He's assisted Hellsing in countless raids since!"

Walter inclined his head. "Be that as it may. Alucard is a creature motivated only by his desires; he feels no allegiance, no obligation, no… tenderness. And he will consume you if you do not guard yourself against him."

Integra wanted to turn from him, with his lined face and its cryptic expression; a familiar face, looking back at her so placidly, inscrutable, hiding its own set of thoughts, agendas, desires. She could not allow herself to seek comfort from him, nor, she knew, would Walter offer it.

Struggling to regain her centre, Integra nodded, once. "I will consider your words."

Sensing her dismissal, the butler bowed again and quietly exited the room, leaving Integra with the luncheon tray and her own unsettled thoughts.

Integra had always know that the work of Hellsing was intimately tied to the business of endings—the ending of the vampiric plague, the ending of heathen defiance to God's word, and that one, final ending, the death of the world itself that would fling open the gates to Paradise. When she had been younger, Integra had imagined a vision of faith incandescent and banners stainlessly white, whipping in the cleansing wind at the end of days.

Integra did not dispute that she needed poison to fight poison, had to meet strength with strength, and deed with deed. She just hadn't imagined that she would be obliged to match the enemy sin for sin, as well.


	2. Chapter 2

**Pull Down Heaven, Part II**

Set during Integra's late teens, pre-canonish. A story of layers, wherein Integra comes to realize that not all monsters wear Alucard's face. The title comes from a line in John Webster's Duchess of Malfi, which I thought appropriate due to the denseness and ambiguity of its meaning. Otherwise known as the fic that very nearly ate me alive.

There were some problems with the story upload manager, but most of the formatting errors should be corrected now.

Disclaimer: Hellsing belongs to Hirano Kouta. I just play in his sandbox.

* * *

**Interlude: Cocytus **

_For the wages of sin is death_….

The fragment of verse tripped across his mind as he watched her, frozen statue-still after her explosive denunciation. The smell of her open wound was faint, but present, and it encircled his awareness, as did the magnitude of the act that he had set out to complete. He wasn't sure what he felt, flying high as he was on a wave of exhilaration and nausea. He could feel his rictus grin stretching his face like a mask.

How he hated her, this chit who glared at him, her eyes so ferociously blue, not even understanding the full extent of how she had so irrevocably ruined things and cheated him of his birthright. But he could change that. He'd shatter her icy reserve, he thought. She was defiant, but brittle, a mere girl that flinched away from him towards the dusty corpse against the wall, and he had not waited so very long, had not come this far, just to fail. How old was she? Nine? Fourteen? And all it would take was one little thing, one very little thing, aimed just right, to end Arthur's line and secure what belonged to him by _right_.

Her spectacles caught the light from the doorway, and for a whirling moment Richard could see himself reflected in the lens, a twinned image of a tall shadow on the other end of the pistol that he held pointed at her. His hand felt as cold as snow.

_Death; but not mine, Fräulein_. The thought was frantic, fuelled by adrenaline and an almost automatic sense of resentment, now decades old. He thought he might have laughed. _Don't look to me for mercy. You'll just have to blame my brother for feeding you to the wolves. _

He prepared to pull the trigger a second time.

**Mirror Lineage **

Triggered by a dreadful kind of fascination, Integra found herself heading down into the cellars where the old laboratories were housed. The mildewed walls of the mansion's sub-levels seemed to crowd in around her, and old memories waited in the shadows and every sharp turn of the stairwell. As Integra negotiated her way down the dimly-lit steps, feeling grit and dust shifting beneath her shoes, she wondered if it was anticipation that caused sweat to break out across the small of her back.

The underground strongrooms that constituted Hellsing's basement were extensive, exceeding the spread of the manor itself. Integra knew now that this sub-level had been dominated by the activities of Hellsing's research and development unit up until a few decades ago. Now, the hallways stood empty, silent, dusty and cold, lit only by the unsteady glow of old fluorescent lights. Labyrinthine passages twined between the rooms, narrow and twisting, conjuring memories of a time when Integra had followed some other narrow, twisting space, seeking safety, seeking to keep herself alive until a solution presented itself to her.

She glanced involuntarily upwards, her eyes tracing the line of the ventilation duct overhead. Little wonder that Alucard had been retained down here so close to the old laboratories; she only wondered that he chose to stay here still, notwithstanding his dislike for daylight. And that, too, Integra reflected, was a sign of how powerful the vampire had become under Hellsing, when the full glare of solar light could be shrugged off as little more than an irritant and not a fatal circumstance. This was for her a point of pride and shame both.

Integra found herself hoping that Alucard had not yet awakened. A quick glance at her wristwatch told her that it was evening—but the No-life King was irregular in his sleeping patterns, evinced by his intrusion upon her in the early hours of the morning. Not for the first time, Integra suspected that it was boredom, more than any real need for rest, that drove Alucard's sleeping habits.

Time seemed to lose its coherence down here. The only measure of progress was the number of steps that she took, navigating the length of one passage only to find it branching into two others. Blackness trailed her from behind, swallowing up the distance she had just traversed. The air she breathed was musty with age and moisture, clinging to her skin with a palpable weight.  
It had been a long time since Integra had last been down here, pursued by real, living men instead of their ghosts. Her work rarely took her beyond her office or the training grounds, and she had avoided the sub-levels, disliking the memories that the closed-off darkness evoked within her.

When Integra found herself facing a dead end for what seemed to be the third time in ten minutes, however, she began to regret her lack of familiarity with the place. She wasn't afraid, no; nor lost, precisely; all the same, it was occurring to her that prolonging her impromptu visit below-ground, any longer than was strictly necessary, was not an idea she relished.

With a sigh of irritation, Integra turned around, preparing to make her way back up the corridor.

Alucard was standing behind her.

Integra started, barely managing to channel her shock into a loud exhalation as her heart trip-hammered, her pulse pounding so loudly in her ears that she felt momentarily light-headed. He was so close she thought she could almost feel the preternatural chill that radiated from him, smell the bloodscent that lingered in his clothing: old, bitter, sharp. The bottom edge of his long coat brushed against her trousers. Integra had to suppress the urge to draw away, disliking even the appearance of ceding ground to him.

"Isn't this a familiar sight," murmured the vampire. He looked at her pleasantly, all civility, which did little for Integra's peace of mind. "It appears that you've strayed a little too far from the path again."

Alucard's hat was drawn low over his head, the overhead lights casting dramatic shadows that obscured all but his amber shades and the lower half of his face. At this range, though, Integra could see Alucard's eyes, orange beneath the yellow tint of his glasses.

She had come down here on an impulse; faced now with the reality of the vampire's presence, she had no idea how to broach the issue. "I thought that you might still be asleep," she said instead, stifling her chagrin.

"You're dismayed. You shouldn't be." Alucard smiled. "I'll even show you the way back if you ask me nicely."

"I'm not lost." Integra shot the vampire a quelling look—which he ignored—before stepping smoothly past him, intending to return to the main intersection. Behind her, she could hear Alucard huff in amusement. He shadowed her soundlessly, matching his stride to hers. The click and echo of her boots were the only sound to accompany their passage.

A cold tendril brushed her mind, inquisitive, insistent, an extension of Alucard's consciousness that transmitted itself to the surface level of her thoughts. _What are you doing here? _

She evaded the question. "Say I wished to reprise some fond old memories."

This elicited an appreciative snigger from the vampire.

"I remember," he told her, satisfaction and dark amusement brimming in his voice (and so did she; remembered: the recoil of the gun in her hands and the wet, tearing sound of a bullet penetrating flesh, nothing at all like the clinical precision of training her aim at the firing range, with soft mufflers over her ears and flat paper targets that perforated cleanly.)

"Although," Alucard added from behind her, "I have a feeling that your uncle might have begged to differ."

Both the vampire and Integra's own uneasy recollections dogged her heels as she left one hallway for the next. She had made her way down here before the sun set, with the hope of concluding her investigations before Alucard awoke. But really, it was of little surprise, she reflected, only a touch sourly, to discover Alucard contrary to her plans and expectations in this matter just as he seemed to be in everything else.

In a bid to divert the vampire's attention from the subject at hand, she asked, "Isn't it a little early for your kind to be up and about?" Finding herself back at the intersection, she turned left, heading down what she thought might be the correct route, counting doors as she went.

"My kind." Something in Alucard's voice made her glance sideways at him. An expression not quite a smile curved the vampire's mouth. "Yes. My kind is beyond the petty rules that bind the younger undead to night and their bodies to the dirt in their coffins.

"Besides which, I can smell you a mile away when you're like this, awake or asleep," his smile abruptly warmed; so did Integra's temper, "so I came sniffing. After all, it's not often that you come down here, Master. I was hoping your presence was an indication that you were in the mood to, shall we say... share?"

Integra tamped down on her outrage and the hot prickle of embarrassment in her ears. She'd used to object to Alucard's less than appropriate manner when it came to her menses, until it became evident that her discomfort was a poor deterrence when it came to the vampire's amusements; indeed, that the reason Alucard so assiduously pursued the subject now (or, at least, part of the reason) was because it flustered her, and because she let it show.

"Over your dead body." She brushed him away with seeming indifference, stretching her stride a little to widen the space between them. She kept her attention on the doors they passed, because if she allowed herself to dwell on his words, she just might turn around and hit him.

The vampire only snorted, easily keeping pace with her. "I fear your wish is somewhat belated. So why are you here, mooning over the past, instead of tending to the present? You're a big girl now, my Lady Hellsing," the smile that he darted at her was secretive, possessive, bordering on intimate, "far too old to be troubling yourself over old and tedious ghosts."

"I don't see what that has to do with you," Integra retorted, nettled by his proprietary manner.

"But Master, we're practically accomplices. Consult your… fond old memories." His teeth flashed beneath the poor light. "Partners in crime, if you will. I lent you an arm in assistance, and, hah, deprived him of one…" Inordinately tickled, Alucard began to chortle, his laughter reverberating though his long frame, deep and obscene.

That stopped her, and she turned back to watch him, incredulous. Once his fit had passed, she said, "That was in incredibly poor taste."

Alucard's smile was all teeth. "He was as well, if I recall."

"I remember that didn't stop you from draining him."

Alucard shrugged dismissively. "I was hungry. And Hellsing blood, even from a man such as he, is Hellsing blood, after all. Especially since I'd received one lick of yours to whet my appetite." The look that he slanted in her direction was pointed.

Integra ignored this, turning away to resume her search. Silenced yawned at her back, though she did not doubt for a moment that Alucard continued to tail her.

It seemed to Integra that the vampire was perpetually hungry. On top of his regular feedings, Walter had advised Integra that her blood, in particular, would reinforce the seals that held Alucard under her control. She donated half a pint of her blood every month to that purpose, a practice that had morbidly struck her as being a second phase to her menstruation.

She spaced out the bleedings in order to reduce their effect on her health, and insisted on two weeks of recuperation time after each period, although the irregular nature of her cycles meant that the donation dates couldn't be fixed, and had to be pushed back every few months. This had been a problem that hadn't occurred to her until a full year after she had released Alucard, when her first menses had arrived. The vampire had voiced his annoyance at every delay until he'd deduced their reason, upon which his intractability had melted into, in Integra's opinion, entirely unwarranted amusement.

She supposed he had never encountered this particular issue while serving under her father, or even her grandfather, for that matter.

Integra felt suddenly tired, thinking of future bleedings, month after month and year after year, all given to sate the vampire's relentless hunger. Two generations of Hellsings had already passed before her, their lives given to the organisation and the demon that it harboured within its walls, yet Alucard would outlive them all. A pang of emotion passed through Integra at the thought, shivering, anxious. She felt infected by a sudden sense of urgency and restlessness, as though her duty as the head of Hellsing had been rendered peculiarly incomplete by the revelation of her own finitude.

It was then that the number on the next door ahead caught her eye, shaking her from her morose thoughts. _LAB B-5. This ought to be it. _

Steeling herself, Integra halted before the locked entrance. Its heavy steel frame was identical to all the rest she had passed by earlier. Ignoring Alucard's arrival beside her, she withdrew from her pocket the large ring of keys, inconsistently labelled, which she had made Walter hand over.

"What is this?" Alucard asked softly, all traces of indolent amusement suddenly evaporated. Then, slightly louder, with an edge to his words, "Why are you here?"

"Walter gave me a birthday present today," she said, with a lightness that belied the churning in her gut. "About four years and two weeks late, I'd say."

"What of it?" he snapped.

"It told me a good deal. About Hellsing, for one. And… it told me about you."

Alucard was silent.

Not looking at him, Integra inserted the matching key into the lock. The key fitted, although the lock was rusty and so stiff that Integra briefly wondered if it had been the wrong one, after all, before the mechanism finally gave way, grinding and squeaking in protest. The sound echoed horribly, unnaturally loud against the quiet emptiness.

As she grasped the handle, preparing to pull the door open, Alucard's hand slammed down against the corroded metal surface, resisting her efforts. The vampire's long arm stretched past her body in an uncanny echo of past events; where Alucard had once sought to shield her, however, he now interposed his body to impede her. Integra looked at the white-gloved hand barring her way, childish memories overlapping with the present. It felt like a lifetime ago.

"Would it help matters," she said in a low voice, "if I apologized?"

"Condolences after the fact? How very convenient," Alucard jeered. "And how do you propose to make your reparations? Will you free me? Kill me?" He leaned in then, startlingly close.

Integra could feel the exhalation that accompanied his speech, frigid as stone against her cheek.

"Just in case you run out of ideas, do keep in mind that I've always harboured a particular fondness for 'an eye for an eye.'"

Alucard's proximity was as beguiling as it was unsettling, repulsive. She found herself thinking of the way he looked, of the greatcoat that shrouded his form and the glasses that hid his eyes. Integra felt herself pricked by a sudden and terrible desire for disclosure, to be known, to lay herself bare, even if it was just to him, this improbable monster who claimed to serve her. Who else might understand? He was someone who knew her as no one else living did—although that was a statement that begged a question.

"You know that I cannot free you," she answered at last, turning to look at him.

The vampire's smile was strangely gentle. "No," he agreed. "I did not expect that you would." He gazed broodingly at her for a while longer before lifting his weight from the door with a short laugh. "My little Master. You _are_ growing up. Look, then, if you so insist. See for yourself the inheritance that you seek to claim."

The smell of entombed air greeted Integra as she forced the door open. Alucard preceded her into the room, disregarding the lack of lighting as he moved out of sight into the shadows beyond. The darkness held the memories of a dozen absent ghosts, and it seemed to watch her as she stood upon the threshold, hesitating. Integra gingerly patted along the wall near the doorframe until she found the light switches, and was almost surprised when the ceiling lamps sullenly flickered on, dim, though still functioning, after three or more decades.

Dust layered everything. The room might have been cleansed and sterilized at some point prior to it being sealed, but underlying the now-faded smell of chlorine and detergent was the lingering odour of old blood. The long tables still held scientific paraphernalia, from microscopes to test tubes to crucibles and various other containers, as though the scientists who used those benches had left their work expecting to return the next day.

Integra moved carefully through the hushed atmosphere, now peering at strange, awkward machines with uses she couldn't begin to guess at, then pausing at the neat rows of small trays, displaying bristling arrays of scalpels, still smooth and only slightly tarnished from disuse and time.

At the very centre of the room was a narrow metal table, just wide and long enough for a tall man. A collection of worn straps, their buckles rusted, lay abandoned along it, suggesting the placements of neck, arms and legs. Integra's lips tightened as she divined their use. She turned away to survey the rest of the disused laboratory.

Alucard stood beside a row of tables positioned against the far wall, peering curiously about as though seeing it for the first time. As Integra watched him gingerly pick up a scalpel, she realized that Alucard had probably never been on that particular end of the metal instrument before.

"How long did they keep you in here?"

Alucard darted her a spiteful look. "It was long enough."

Morbid curiosity compelled her next question. "What was it like?"

Quite unexpectedly, Alucard began to laugh, the sound echoing hollowing through the room. It was moments like these that most forcefully reminded Integra of Alucard's nature, the strange, ancient, impenetrable being that inhabited his human frame. He laughed the way a human might, but in mad, violent fits that speared his body. She had seen him like this during the occasional mission, drunk on power and blood, laughing as he disembowelled his target, spattered red and drenched in gore.

Suddenly, the vampire lunged, slamming his hands onto the table behind her, effectively trapping her in between. Integra braced herself, even as every muscle in her body locked in shock. His face was inches from hers. He smiled, an unsettling view of too many sharp teeth at all too close a range, and his eyes gleamed at her through his glasses, red as pomegranates.

He was furious, she realized with no little surprise. Alucard was frequently amused by the events that transpired around him; she had seen him murderously pleased; gleeful; contemptuous; hysterical. Integra did not think that she had ever been treated to this particular sight, of an Alucard who was truly angry, his wide mouth twisted downwards in discontent, flat dislike sparking in what she could see of his face.

"What was it like?" the vampire repeated, and Integra wasn't sure what the edge in his voice was—mockery, incredulity, rage. "What would you like to hear? That they took me apart and remade me? Shall I tell you what it felt like, those years in which I was confined to this space alone, attended by machines, with knives in my flesh to keep the incisions open? Shall I tell you what they did to melt my skin and break my bones? The things they pumped into me to catalogue how I would react to them, to see if they could kill me?"

Even as Integra stared, the pale skin of his features seemed to rip, prised apart by invisible knives. The side of his jaw was suddenly revealed as the flesh drew away from his skull, peeled back by unseen fingers to reveal the ivory beneath. The smell of blood choked her senses, hard, metallic, red. Darkness crept over room, smothering the dim light in increments. There was a suggestion of teeth from within the shadows that flitted over the tiles, of jittering wings and red eyes that stared and swivelled towards her.

The lurid red of Alucard's hat and greatcoat darkened and appeared to lose its consistency, falling away from him like oil. The body revealed beneath was bare and cold and white, a body like those of the soldiers Integra occasionally glimpsed, crossing from the bath house to their barracks at the rear of the mansion. This body, however, was patterned with half-healed cuts and hasty sutures, and Alucard's soft red insides were revealed by the careless tears and surgical incisions that appeared, cut by cut, along his ribs.

It was too much to absorb all at once: the horror of his broken form, the bareness of his body, unobscured by his flapping greatcoat—all of him, suddenly offered up to her sight.

Alucard was smiling like a knife. "How about I _show_ you."

He struck then, a burst of sensory memory that speared into her mind. Integra cried out in shock as Alucard's right arm suddenly twisted at the elbow, feeling the tendons in her corresponding limb strain, then snap. The sharp upthrust of bone that appeared before her eyes, white amidst the streaming red, and the high scream of pain in her body were one and the same, until she clutched reflexively at her arm and realized that her own flesh was whole and unmarred.

Left reeling by his attack, Integra was wholly unprepared when the vampire exploited the gap in her mental defenses, overwhelming her with a deluge of pain that seemed to know no end. She felt the fissures carved into Alucard's flesh just as keenly as the crack that suddenly staved his head open, the burn of eyes gouged from their sockets, the sharp agony of fingers snapped, then severed, a never-ending assault that obliterated the lines between his body and hers, for the pain that flared red behind her eyes was the same red that painted his skin, and it was only some instinct for self-preservation that slammed shut the connection between their minds, cutting off the agonizing tide of sensation that invaded her.

Integra returned to herself to realize that she was trembling, and damp with sweat beneath her suit. She swallowed against the nausea that threatened to overcome her, panting.

"You—" she rasped. "What did you—how dare you!" Her voice shook without meaning to. The slickness on her face that she had imagined was blood tasted of salt and came away clear on her fingertips.

She had fallen forward, her palms closing around Alucard's bare forearms—whole once more—and she could not seem to let go of him, the firm boundary between her flesh and his cold skin serving to anchor her to the present, to herself. She jerked her hands away.

The vampire was watching her avidly. "All that and more has Hellsing given me," he murmured. A feverish undertone accompanied his words. "All that and more was what dear Arthur dared. As you can see, I was quite the skeleton in his cupboard."

"You wretch," Integra snarled. "Don't compare my father with yourself!"

"No? But you Hellsings have a penchant for this kind of sport, wouldn't you agree? I seem to recall—" his eyes flickered in the direction of the ceiling as he feigned consideration, "a charming interlude, our meeting, rudely interrupted by your uncle. Though I must admit that you dispatched him swiftly enough." His gaze was downcast now, almost coy, in the manner of one inviting a confidence. "I _saved _him, you know. Just for you. It was only his arm that I took."

It was a blow to match the first. The world seemed to tremble as Integra's memories fell into new alignment around the creature that stood before her.

"You saved him," she said finally, flatly. "For me."

"You surpassed my every expectation, even then. I barely had to teach you to pull the trigger."

Integra fought to keep her hands from clenching. "God damn your hide," she breathed.

The vampire only laughed. "It was a good shot, Master."

He was hardwired for her protection (she had all of Hellsing's cruelties to thank for this as well) and could not touch her in violence, but he savaged her in other ways, circling like a hound scenting blood. The image of a cold basement with blood on the walls flashed before her mind's eye, and Integra couldn't restrain the shudder that rolled over her.

"Shut up," she ground out. "Shut up! I don't want to hear another word from that lying mouth of yours."

Alucard's voice, when he spoke again, was deceptively gentle. "You know me to be many things, but deceitful is not one of them. Have you ever known me to lie to you, Master?"

Anger seemed the safer emotion. "You only speak truth when it suits your purposes."

"Nevertheless, it is truth. Arthur had his own conscience to contend with. And when he could no longer face what he had done in the name of your God," the vampire's contempt was evident, "he opted to lock his monster away so he wouldn't have to look at the one that he saw in the mirror every morning. Don't you remember how we met, Master? You wished for strength, and I gave it to you. I taught you to kill. Will you now shut me away and pretend that no blood ever touched your hands? What will you do?"

Integra felt her stomach twist at his words. He could not harm her, not physically, but there were other ways of dying, small deaths that took one slowly, by inches. She wondered if he was succeeding.

"What will you do, Arthur's daughter?"

_Go away,_ she was tempted for a moment to say, the desire to do so battering her heart. _Go, I release you from your service. Go and don't ever come back. _

She knew everything there was to be known about him now. His technical abilities, the extent of his subjugation to her line, his complete history; even his psychological profile had been bared to her examination. She had never felt so lost. He was trying to unsettle her, shake her, even as anger warred against grief inside her. How could it be borne? But she had to defy him. It could not be reconciled: not Hellsing and its murky past, nor the anger of the vampire before her, but she would have to bear both. She was Hellsing, and grief was not a sufficient reason to hesitate.

"What will you do? Integra?"

Steeling herself, Integra pushed away from him and reached for the old bench where the scalpels lay. She removed the glove of her left hand. Alucard had grown still, and the shadows were retreating, leaving the room bright once more. She looked up to meet his speculative gaze, watching as his skin rippled like water parting to reveal the red cloth of his coat.

"Whatever I must," she said.

A bemused smile appeared on Alucard's face as he realized her intent. Wordlessly, he approached her, fully clad once more. She stared at him until he kneeled before her, head tilted upwards like an expectant pet, waiting to be fed. Which, she supposed, was exactly the truth. Alucard seemed eager, and Integra found herself wondering what it was that he wanted of her, and if he dreamed of anything beyond blood and vengeance and death.

_Do you know what you are promising, Integra? _

Integra found herself thinking of guilt, and power, and duty and need, all neatly embodied within him, her improbable family heirloom. The future loomed in her mind, grim and indistinct, clinging like fog where she most needed to see clear. She had to do this, to shape both her and him, weapons to be aimed at a future that awaited. She was not strong enough to pull it off alone.

Integra flourished the scalpel in a slightly theatrical gesture, drawing the vampire's attention. Blood was more than mere sustenance, as far as Alucard was concerned. It was more than payment, or a mere medium for exchange, or even a means of keeping score. At the back of her mind, she found herself hoping that the scalpel's edge was clean.

Then she braced herself, and cut.

The smell of rust burst across the musty dankness. Alucard leaned involuntarily towards her, his mouth slackening with an almost sensual eagerness. She had fed him before, but always indirectly, through packets of her own donated blood, as Walter insisted. Reaching out with her bleeding finger, she traced it across his mouth, sealing, with her blood, an oath more binding than words could encompass.

Alucard's lips were as cool and smooth as ivory. Integra had never touched him like this before, flesh to dead flesh, a contact that was as intimate as it was impersonal. The vampire's tongue darted out, tasting, and she let him lap at her fingertip, frowning slightly at the strangeness of it all when he began to suckle it, his tongue abrading the cut.

It was the vampire who pulled away first. He knelt there like a statue, still as stone, looking up at her.

"We are more alike than different, you and I." Integra arched a brow at him, but he went on, unperturbed. "I have been shaped by forces beyond my control… just as you have. Your grandfather and father remade me, but I, in turn, have shaped you." He paused thoughtfully. "One might argue, in this vein, that I have had payment enough."

Not a trace of her blood remained on his mouth. Still on his knees, he leaned forward, closing the distance between them. He reached up to grasp the soft silk of her necktie between gloved fingers, lightly running his thumb across the fine cloth.

Integra felt the familiar sensation of clenching again, low in her stomach. She took refuge in flippancy. "Complicity, Alucard? Are we supposed to be transgressors in arms, or mutual victims?"

Alucard was silent. "You are my iron queen," he finally said. It did not surprise Integra that he had failed to address her question, instead twisting the conversation towards his own ends. "I see your mind. I know what you want. I wanted the same things that you do, once, when I fought so hard to reclaim my Jerusalem. I died for it, and now I no longer even want it. But where I had failed, you will succeed."

Integra found herself staring at his gloves, trying to imagine the skin hidden underneath. Looking up, she saw only herself reflected in the flat mirror-sheen of his shades, the bright gleam of her cross standing out against the darker colours of her tie and her suit.

"Harness my strength to yours, Master... Integra." His smile was sly. "Take my power and wield it. Together, we will draw down the very eyes of your God upon this world."

**Interlude: The Devil You Know **

"Jesus Christ," Arthur swore as the vampire appeared through the wall behind him.

"Flattering," said Alucard. "But it's actually me."

"Sodding vampire." The Hellsing lord gestured irritably before his desk. "I don't know why you persist in wearing that stupid coat."

Alucard seated himself, ostentatiously straightening the folds of his greatcoat. "I don't see why you should object to the style. Your father used to wear one just like this."

"It's old-fasioned is what is it," Arthur retorted. "Every time I see you, I think it's my old man come to badger me again." He drew on his cigar, pointedly exhaling in the vampire's direction. Alucard did not so much as twitch. _Freak doesn't even need to breathe_, Arthur reminded himself, trying to forget about the twinge of the needle's entry point at the joint of his arm—an entire month's reprieve before he would have to give again. "Go on, then," he instructed curtly. "Make your report."

Alucard did, lingering lovingly over descriptions of how he had ambushed and taken the ghouls apart. The vampire he had been tracking was gone, driven further underground by the efforts of Hellsing. Arthur found himself hoping that their quarry wouldn't take long to resurface again—while off missions, Alucard tended to spend his time gorging himself on as many blood packets as he could lay his hands on, like some under-stimulated, caged animal seeking to distract itself from its own boredom. And while blood was always readily available, finding the means to obtain it legally was an issue that vexed Arthur on a daily basis. Idly, he wondered if his army would be up for another round of donations, should the regular channels not prove accommodating.

Alucard had fallen silent. Arthur looked at him, trying to conceal his distraction. "Was there anything else?"

"No, Master. Am I dismissed?"

"Yes. No, just one more thing. We've taken in a kid—he's what, nine? Ten? He's not familiar with the place so I don't want you popping out of walls and scaring the bloody piss out of him. You—just keep out of his sight, you hear me?"

"Why Arthur, I hadn't realized your tastes ran in that direction."

"Don't be ridiculous. He's some stray we picked up, with no one to claim him and nothing to lose. I'm thinking of having him trained. For the security of the estate."

Alucard only smiled, murmuring, "As I said," and disappeared through the floor before Arthur had the chance to curse at him, or demand to know what he meant.

**Acts of Burial **

Integra remained in the laboratory long after Alucard had left.

The walls of the basement loomed around her. The Hellsing mansion was large, dating back to the nineteenth century—not so very long ago in relative terms, but the building itself was showing the signs of age. It was growing expensive to maintain; bricks crumbled, the ceilings leaked and its doorframes gently rotted through a process of termites and years. It was as though the past was a palpable weight that bore down upon the mansion, growing heavier each day.

Integra walked over to the door and turned off the lights, plunging her into darkness. She felt the dip in temperature as she wrestled the laboratory door shut and locked it—chilled, yet unaccountably relieved—sealing the room off once more.

**End.**


End file.
